I do a lot of event photography here in Denver; pretty much anything from conventions, conferences and lectures, to music and concerts, and everything in between. I know some people have been un-thrilled with the detail the 7D2 gives them in their bird/wildlife photography, but oddly enough, I think the 7D2 is a perfect companion to a 5D3 for events.

The ISOs and the extra reach (especially when you're forced to shoot from the back of a room), are incredible. I essentially got double the megapixels from the 7D2 (compared to the 5D3).

Here's a quick review and image comparo of an event I photographed last week.

PS: For those wondering why I picked 100mm as my point of comparison... I would've much preferred to compare 200mm between the 5D3 and 7D2, I just don't have two 70-200 lenses! Also, the room just wasn't big enough to justify 200mm on the 7D2, but hopefully, you get the point about cropping (images) vs. reach.

So, when my 7D2 gets here, I've decided to take a stab at doing a video review - mainly for the fun of it. Does anyone have any specific features/items they'd like to see touched on? Any suggestions/input for what you'd like to see specifically covered would be great.

I took advantage of the 6D package deal on B&H a few months ago, and have since moved the 6D into regular rotation as my primary backup/second body. This was a position that was held by my 7D (now since sold) for three years, and it did a very good job at auto-exposing in the shutter/aperture priority modes. However, I'm finding that the 6D is INCREDIBLY inconsistent in these modes, giving me images that vary +/- 2 stops or so, even in the vary same scene/composition!! I can also see the metering indicator bouncing ALL OVER the meter between exposure checks, even without moving the camera or recomposing!! WTF??

As a result, this requires a ton of extra tweaking time in post to get images to look right, and limits my ability to bulk-sync settings, since each image is always different from the next. I've since resorted to using my 6D in manual mode only, but it kind of defeats the purpose of having a second body to grab and shoot with in certain instances when I just need a quick shot. Basically, the aperture/shutter priority modes are completely unreliable. This approach has me rethinking the versatility of the 6D in the field, especially since my 5D3 and 7D never experienced such irregularities between shots in these modes.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? Will a trip to Canon Irvine solve it, or is this common across the body? Is Canon aware of it, and is a firmware update planned?

I love the quality of the 6D images - when it works. But spending needless hours to compensate for wonky exposures is quickly becoming infuriating.

While watching the behind-the-scenes of Jenny McCarthy's Playboy shoot, I was a little stumped by the software suite they were using on location. It's certainly not Lightroom, and I'm not familiar with Aperture... does anyone know what this software is?

I just sold my old 580s and PocketWizard gear on eBay, and went over to Amazon to upgrade to the ST-E3 and 600EX-RT, and found this...

Quote

Item Under Review

While this item is available from other marketplace sellers on this page, it is not currently offered by Amazon.com because customers have told us there may be something wrong with our inventory of the item, the way we are shipping it, or the way it's described here. (Thanks for the tip!)

Does anyone know what this is about? After further digging, I've found there are a lot of people unhappy with the overheat protection kicking in way too soon on the 600's, ruining gigs in the field. Is this related? It also sounds like Canon has been unresponsive to this problem.

Now I'm really nervous about moving to the 600's with all of this weirdness surrounding the product. Can anyone shine some light on what's going on?

Can anyone comment/report on battery drain issues on their Pixel Vertax BG-E11 battery grip for the 5D3? I charged up 4 LP-E6's last week (all official, no knockoffs) and put them in my 7D and 5D3 grips (attached to their respective bodies). They sat stored in the cameras inside a bag for 7-8 days. Then last night I had a gig; I pull out the 5D3 and the battery level had only 2-bars, and quickly dropped to 1-bar.

Both the 5D3 body and the grip were switched OFF while in storage. The grip was also OFF during my shoot, as I was doing landscape orientation shots. Within 45 minutes of shooting I had to swap batteries as they were fully drained. I pulled out the 7D, turned it on, and it was fully charged. I swapped the batteries into my 5D3, and it too showed a full charge.

I completed the gig with no issues, but this really got me worried that the Vertax grip has a battery drain. I'm doing a controlled test this week with fresh batteries to see what happens after a few days of storage.

I'm looking to snag a BG-E11, but the big guys all seem to be sold out (Adorama, BH, Amazon, etc.). There are a bunch of random shops that claim to have it in stock - but I've never dealt with any of them, and the majority seem to have hit-or-miss experiences in their Google reviews.

Should I trust these small guys, or wait for the big names to get more stock in?

I saw a photographer gigging a location last night with some clients. It was dusk, sun was on the horizon and losing intensity quickly... he was using it as a backlight/kicker, but instead of a front-fill flash, he had an assistant using a small hand-held/portable continuous light that he had gelled over. It looked like it even had mini barn doors on it. the entire apparatus didn't appear to be bigger than a large apple.

How many of you gel your speedlites to match ambient lighting at indoor event shoots?

I normally do not gel at events, but then again my past event work has typically been in low-light environments where ambient lighting isn't an issue. However, I shot an event in a ballroom the other day, and the results look hideously "point-and-shoot"-ish. Meaning, the people are all balanced to flash, but the background is that hideous orange tungsten glow. To make matters worse, the walls were all wallpapered a deep yellow-ish orange hue, so the contrast in color balance is extremely obvious, and makes the photos look atrociously amateur.

I started painting in a white balance correction in Lightroom on the background, but then realized I didn't have the time to do it on 200 photos. I'm chalking this up as a lesson learned, and if I had to do it again I'd definitely gel with a CTO correction. Do many of you do this in environments with heavy tungsten lighting?